Howard Hodgkin: Absent Friends

The late great Howard Hodgkin is widely recognised as one of Britain's greatest contemporary artists for his explosive use of colour and shapes. It sure is sad he recently passed, but this show gives us an immediate chance to see why he's so goddamn revered.
It might be at the National Portrait Gallery, but portrait is used in a pretty broad sense here. Hodgkin's paintings aren't the usual painted depictions you're used to seeing — they're not about what people look like but the feelings they give off. And feelings are something plenty of us have in common. This is a record of the artist's numerous human encounters and it should be a touching, colourful show full of shapes and forms.